


The Years Go On (But I Can't)

by collapsethelightintoearth



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bittersweet, Closure, F/M, Goodbyes, Leaving, Tenth Doctor Era, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 14:19:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collapsethelightintoearth/pseuds/collapsethelightintoearth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘The years go on,” Rose thinks. ‘But I can’t.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Years Go On (But I Can't)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a slight AU in which Doomsday never happened, and Rose has been traveling with the Doctor for fourteen years.

‘The years go on,” Rose thinks. ‘But I can’t.’

The Doctor tells her quietly that she’s thirty-three when she asks one day. There’s a tightness to his smile, and she _knows_ he’s thinking about her short human lifespan. After all, it’s been fourteen years since she first stepped inside the TARDIS. So much time has gone by for her; how little she imagines must have gone by for him.

She wants to protest. Wants to say, ‘I’m still young; _I still have time_.’ She doesn’t say anything, though. The knowledge that whatever the Doctor is thinking is probably the truth sits in her stomach like lead. And so she remains silent, and the Doctor is back to his usual self within an hour. But that day, a seed is planted in the back of Rose’s mind, and it only grows with time.

Another year goes by and Rose finally decides that her time on the TARDIS must end. It’s not that she’s tired of exploring the universe. Not at all. The realization of _why_ she wants to leave has been harder to come to terms with than the decision itself. The truth is she’s outgrown the Doctor. Years ago she would have said, without a doubt, that she loved him enough to stay for the rest of her life. But she was young then, and she knows now that staying for her version of forever isn’t fair to either of them.

Rose asks the Doctor if she can visit her mum about a month later. He nods slowly, carefully, as if sensing some monumental difference in her. Then: “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

A lifetime ago, she would have stammered out excuses. No, a lifetime ago she wouldn’t have even asked, too enamored with the concept of ‘forever’.

Now she just tilts her chin up and says, “Yes.” As if that’s all there is to it. And maybe it is.

He drops her off in front of her mum’s house, in the time when she should be twenty-five. He holds her close and whispers, for the first and last time, “Rose Tyler, I love you.” Then, “Be brilliant.”

“I love you too,” Rose replies, because she really does. It’s just not enough anymore. While she does truly love him, she is not _in love_ with him. Even at nineteen, starry-eyed and impressionable, she was more in love with the idea of him. It took fourteen long years to come to that conclusion, and it’s like a weight has been lifted from her entire being.

“And I will. I know it.”

Rose steps out of the TARDIS onto solid ground. She breathes it in: Earth in all its glory.

Rose Tyler is thirty-four when she leaves the Doctor, with something like hope mingling with relief filling her chest.

She walks up to the door and knocks, heart pounding. Jackie answers it.

“Rose,” she breathes.

“Hi, Mum,” Rose says with a watery smile. “I’m home.”

And so she is.


End file.
